Subject: [Tools-discuss] Tools resources that we use: bap

From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2021 10:18:44 -0500

On 3/5/21 9:36 AM, Robert Sparks wrote:
> Please drop notes to the tools-discuss list or directly to me as you 
> think of things. I'd like for you to catch them as you see you need them.

> On 3/5/21 2:51 AM, Carsten Bormann wrote:
>> On 2021-03-05, at 09:39, Stewart Bryant <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>> To whom do we send a list of the tools resources that we use?
>> We could start a discussion thread on tools-discuss.

I use bap from time to time. Unfortunately AFAIK it is barely 
maintained. After I finished RFC7405 I asked Bill Fenner about 
incorporating support for it in bap. He was very hard to reach. I then 
implemented the necessary updates to bap and submitted a pull request. 
But it was never acted upon. I eventually just gave up.

I'd really like to have better support for ABNF in the draft pipeline. 
Ideally ABNF checking would be an automatic part of the process. 
Unfortunately it is hard to do well. Much ABNF in drafts/RFCs has 
dependencies on ABNF in some other document, and those dependencies are 
stated informally so that it takes manual processing to prepare 
something that can be fully checked by bap. If/how to resolve this needs 
discussion and then probably some implementation work.

	Thanks,
	Paul

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From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2021 16:28:31 +0100

> But it was never acted upon. I eventually just gave up.

The http-core editors have their own fork (which does 7405, but also
handles the HTTP #list production). See
<https://github.com/httpwg/http-core/tree/master/bap>.

> discussion and then probably some implementation work.

In HTTP (core), we declare all ABNF productions that we import as prose,
for instance, see
<https://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-ietf-httpbis-semantics-14.html#uri.references>.

With that, the ABNF at least is self-contained and can be checked
automatically (and we do that in our build process).

Best regards, Julian

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From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2021 10:50:37 -0500

> On Mar 5, 2021, at 10:18 AM, Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
>> Please drop notes to the tools-discuss list or directly to me as you think of things. I'd like for you to catch them as you see you need them.
> 
> I use bap from time to time. Unfortunately AFAIK it is barely maintained. After I finished RFC7405 I asked Bill Fenner about incorporating support for it in bap. He was very hard to reach. I then implemented the necessary updates to bap and submitted a pull request. But it was never acted upon. I eventually just gave up.

The last time that I used Bap, the case sensitive parts were in there.

Russ

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From: Paul Kyzivat <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2021 11:15:24 -0500

> The last time that I used Bap, the case sensitive parts were in there.

Ah! So it is. I missed it going in.

My other comments remain.

	Thanks,
	Paul